Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - Bystander Part 5 Open Eyes

Transcript

Andy Stanley - Bystander Part 5 Open Eyes · Andy Stanley Sermons

0:01
Now here's something that I think about all the time because I don't know.
0:04
We're all wired differently. And for those of you who are into the enneagram,
0:08
any Enneagram fans in the house, yes, okay, only a certain
0:11
number of you raised your hand. Others of you were with fives. I'm
0:14
a five, so the fives are like, why did he ask us to
0:16
raise our hand? And any more information? So anyway, I'm a five
0:19
on the anagram, which means I think, I try to understand everything,
0:23
and I constantly feel stupid. My whole life. I have felt stupid,
0:25
It's true. And and in school because and so our family, Sandra and
0:30
I watch This is Us. That's kind of like our show and This is
0:33
Us fans. Yeah, and yes, so same people who are fives.
0:37
It's amazing right here an we might be related anyway. So when I watch
0:43
This is Us, this is my thing, I say to Sandra, and
0:46
she knows it's coming. She just rolls her eyes. I say, this
0:48
program makes me feel so stupid, and it makes me feel stupid because I
0:52
can't figure out how they did it, and I just I just want to
0:55
figure everything out. So for me, when it comes to God, and
0:58
maybe you can relate to this. There's something in me, Like, I'm
1:00
sure there's something in all of us that's like, you know, if if
1:03
God would just do something spectacular one time that I saw, then maybe I
1:07
would I would have bigger faith or more faith, or I would understand better.
1:11
And I think, as I think about this all the time, I
1:15
think God is so present, and I think God is so apparent that we
1:21
miss God. And again we want God to do something spectacular to prove that
1:26
he is. And I wonder, I wonder if God thinks, okay,
1:30
like what like, what do you want me to do? Like create a
1:34
rock large enough for you to live on and fine tune everything about it and
1:38
everything around it so it sustains life and stands in start contrast to all the
1:44
other floating rocks in the universe. What if I do that? Oh I
1:47
already did that, and we're like no, no, no, do something
1:49
really amazing. Okay, how about this? How about a five hundred and
1:55
seventy six megapixel camera. How about I get you two of them and put
2:00
them on the front of your head, And how about I connect them to
2:05
a three thousand gigahertz computer with enough memory for you to pass knowledge down generation
2:13
after generation after generation. Already did that too. How about this little trick
2:19
while the speaker is speaking, and before he can finish this sentence, fifty
2:22
thousand cells in your body you're gonna die and be replaced by new ones before
2:24
we can even finish the sentence. And we're like, and it does all
2:30
that with no conscious effort on your part. If in fact, this is
2:34
really confusing and I don't even know if this makes sense. This is just
2:37
where my head goes. Our minds are way I mean, our brains are
2:40
way smarter than our minds. I mean, stuff's going on in your body
2:44
all the time. You don't even know about that. It just just goes
2:46
on. And all of that's true, And what is our response? No,
2:51
no, no, no, We want you to do something like truly
2:53
spectacular, like like a miraculous healing that would just it, and to which
3:00
God may think, I don't you know, it's not smart to put words
3:02
in God's mouth, but I think he may think, Okay, well,
3:07
thanks to that three thousand gigahertz computer that all of you are carrying around,
3:12
you are able to miraculously heal most diseases yourself I don't. I didn't just
3:19
heal people. I created a species of self healers. In fact, if
3:25
people from two thousand years ago showed up and visited a modern hospital, they
3:30
would think the doctors are God's okay, So I just wanted to share that
3:37
with you. Today. We are in part I look at there. We
3:39
are in part five of our series Bystander. The subtitle is John and the
3:45
Rabbi from Nazareth, and we are following John as he journeys with Jesus.
3:50
And John decided to give us an account. He's an old man, as
3:52
I've shared with him. He gives us an account of his time with Jesus,
3:54
and he dictates this. I don't think he wrote this. Maybe he
3:57
did, but he probably dictated this because he's an old man. He probably
4:00
couldn't see very well, couldn't write very well. And he organizes this account
4:03
around specific events that he says are signs that point to not simply what Jesus
4:10
did, but they point to who Jesus was. And he documents all of
4:14
this so that future generations would know the story of Jesus. But his agenda
4:18
isn't simply that we know what happened. His agenda is that we would be
4:23
convinced that Jesus is who Jesus claimed he was. In fact, he has
4:28
an agenda for you, and he has an agenda for me, and he
4:30
has an agenda for every generation that would follow. And here's his agenda.
4:34
He tells us at the end of his document that this thing we call the
4:38
Gospel of John. He says, by the way these things are written,
4:41
the ones I chose to write, because he said, I didn't cover everything
4:44
Jesus did, But the ones I chose to cover in the order I put
4:46
them in, were written that you might believe. I want you to respond
4:50
to this now, I go, oh, that's interesting. I want you
4:53
to believe, specifically, all of you Jewish people, that Jesus is the
4:57
Messiah that we had been waiting on all all of these years. And if
5:00
you're not Jewish, I want you to be convinced that he is the actual,
5:03
as odd as this may sound, the unique Son of God. And
5:09
I don't want you to simply believe that it is true. Once you believe
5:13
that this is true, I want you to place your trust in him.
5:16
And by placing your trust in him and deciding to follow him, you will
5:19
have a different kind of life in his name. So he has an agenda
5:26
and he organizes his this incredible account around these events that he calls signs.
5:30
So today we come to the fifth sign. The way some people count these,
5:34
that might be the sixth sign, but I'm going to call it the
5:38
fifth sign. And he again outlines this and gives us this in such a
5:42
way that we might follow along this little piece of narrative and come to the
5:45
conclusion. Wow, John, you're right. Jesus is who Jesus claim to
5:47
be. Now, if you had a paper bible, an actual physical bible,
5:51
your grandparents had these. Anyway, if you had a physical bible,
5:55
you would see us a heading something like this healing of a blind man,
5:59
and this is part of your physical paper Bible. So let me catch you
6:02
up with where we are in the series, and then we'll jump into this
6:03
narrative. Jesus travels throughout his ministry up and down, up and down,
6:08
north and south, north and south, south and north, from Judea to
6:11
Galilee, back to Judea, to Galilee to Judea and Judea. He's usually
6:15
in danger because this is where Jerusalem is and the Temple leaders, and they're
6:17
a little bit put out by John the Baptist and then by Jesus because they
6:21
contradict, or seem to contradict, so much of what they believed, and
6:25
they're stirring up the people, and they don't want the people stirred up,
6:28
because if the people get stirred up, Rome gets stirred up. And if
6:30
Rome gets stirred up, there's just trouble. So Jesus will go to Jerusalem
6:34
and dabble and kind of stir things up. Then he'll go back to Galilee,
6:38
take a breather, teach, and then come back. So in this
6:40
particular part of jesus journey, he's back in the vicinity of Jerusalem, the
6:45
city of Jerusalem. John is with him, and John says, here's what
6:48
happened. As we he could say, but he says he as he went
6:54
along, or Jesus went along, he saw a man blind from birth,
6:59
and his disciple, John, being one of these followers, ask him,
7:01
rabbi. And I'm sure they whispered this rabbi. You see the gentleman over
7:05
there begging. He's there all the time. We're curious who's sinned? Who
7:12
sinned this man? This blind man or his parents that he was born blind,
7:16
because the assumption in the first century was that there was a cause and
7:20
effect relationship between sin and suffering. If somebody is suffering, it's because they
7:25
sinned, so in some sense they were getting what they deserve, which obviously
7:28
had an interesting relationship with the compassion shown to people who were suffering if you
7:32
believe they were suffering for some past sin. But the way they thought about
7:35
it, a pregnant woman could go into a pagan temple, and her son
7:39
or daughter, whence they were born, would suffer because of their mom's disobedience
7:42
to God by going into a pagan temple. So they had all this mystery
7:46
and all this superstition. Now we know that sometimes our behavior results in suffering,
7:50
right, and we also know that sometimes we suffer because of other people's
7:56
behavior. But when that's the case, it's usually and when it's not obvious,
8:01
as Jesus is about to point out, there is no connection. So
8:07
Jesus shifts their paradigm and what he says next. He says, the answer
8:11
to that question is that him or his parents. The answer is neither.
8:16
Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, is this you're thinking
8:22
completely wrong about all this. And then he says something that may create a
8:26
new category for you. And you may think is insensitive for me to say,
8:30
But I promise I would not say this if I was not quoting Jesus.
8:33
I'm not that insensitive. He says, But this happened, this being
8:37
this man being born blind. But this happened so that this happened so that
8:46
Jesus teaches here and Jesus teaches in other places that pain can have a purpose,
8:52
that pain can act, pain and suffering can actually actually have a divine
8:56
purpose. Perhaps pain and suffering always has a purpose, Jesus, pain and
9:03
suffering certainly did. This man's pain and suffering certainly did. And maybe maybe
9:11
your pain and suffering has a purpose as well. We know it's a category.
9:16
But Jesus continues, but this happened. In other words, this man
9:18
isn't being punished, his parents aren't being punished. But this particular pain and
9:22
suffering are an episode of pain and suffering happened so that and then he gives
9:26
us to sew that so that the works of God might be displayed in him,
9:33
so that the works have got in other words, sometimes sometimes God chooses.
9:37
Sometimes God chooses to display his power on the platform or the stage of
9:43
our pain and our suffering. In fact, you've seen that before. I
9:48
bet you've seen someone who's pain and suffering. Their response to their pain and
9:52
suffering was so extraordinary it caused your faith to get bigger. I've seen that.
9:58
As a pastor, I have seen all kinds of things, as you
10:01
might imagine, and the most extraordinary things to me in my personal Christian life.
10:05
The most extraordinary things to me are not the people who live wrinkle free
10:09
lives. Their kids all get scholarships, and everybody lives to be ninety nine
10:13
and dies in their sleep. That's not impressive, right. What's impressive is
10:18
a man or a woman, or a child, or a family or an
10:20
individual that goes through an extraordinarily difficult, difficult time and their faith is rock
10:26
solid. There's a man in our community group has als. His name is
10:33
Tim. Tim is dying of als. His faith, his smile and his
10:37
confidence is staggering. He makes me want Christianity to be true even if it's
10:45
not true, because of what I see and what I experience with Tim.
10:50
He's got an incredible sense of humor. I wasn't planning to talk about him,
10:54
but I'm talking about him. So Tim, he's at home watching.
10:56
Sorry, dude, I apologize ahead of time. Anyway, Tim him the
11:01
other day he was, you know, he was just kind of moping around.
11:03
Usually he's just so happy. He can barely get around anymore. And
11:05
his wife, Carla says, Tim, he said, Tim, what's wrong
11:09
with you? And he said he can barely speak. So I'm not going
11:13
to try to talk like him. She said, Tim, what's wrong with
11:15
you? He said, I think I have als and I can't kick it.
11:20
He comes to our small group, his joy is so it's it's just
11:26
you've seen this. You have seen God demonstrate his power on the platform of
11:30
human weakness and suffering. So he turns to his audience. Jesus turns to
11:35
his audience and he says, this, okay, they're focused on this blind
11:39
man. They're kind of whispering about him. Jesus turns to disciples and he
11:41
says, hey, guys, as long as it is day, we must
11:46
do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one
11:48
can work to which they thought, see that's what you do. We're talking
11:52
about one thing, and now you're talking about something else. Okay, we're
11:54
talking about why this man is blind. And now what he goes on.
11:58
He says, why this is so important? While I am in the world,
12:03
I am the light of the world. Here's his point. This is
12:07
so powerful. This is the point of John's gospel. He says, Look,
12:09
guys, my identity, who I truly am, will never be more
12:15
apparent than it is right now. The light of the world me, the
12:18
light of the world will never be brighter than it is right now while I
12:22
am on planet Earth. And when I leave, it will be dark.
12:28
And when I leave it will be dark. Indeed, so gentlemen, ladies,
12:31
he would say, watch me, learn from me and believe. And
12:35
John, you and Matthew, you guys take good notes. I don't know
12:41
if he would have said that or not. After saying this, and there's
12:43
you know, they're like, okay, are we back to the guy that
12:46
was blind. After saying this, Jesus does the strangest thing. He spits
12:48
on the ground. And before they could say, hey, we don't do
12:52
that here close to the temple, he made some mud with a saliva and
12:56
he put it on the man's eyes. Now I wish we had more details,
12:58
but we don't. Did he ask him first, Did he say,
13:03
Peter and John hold him down? I mean, I don't think so.
13:07
But this is just odd and we don't have any more details. So Jesus
13:09
makes, you know, Spitz makes mud with his saliva and just you know,
13:15
puts it on the guy's eyes, you know, you know. And
13:18
then he says something to him that we've heard him tell other people. He
13:22
says something that actually he tells our whole generation. He says, to the
13:26
man who was born blind, go, He told him, walk away from
13:31
me, leave my presence, go and wash in the pool of saloon.
13:37
So the blind man, this is foreshadowing. This is John's whole point.
13:41
This is why he chose this event. So the blind man walks by faith
13:48
and not by what literally you know what he did. He did what your
13:56
heavenly father would like for you to do. He chose to trust someone he
14:03
could not see, based on rumors about that person. At the end of
14:09
John's gospel, we're gonna talk about this when we get there. I just
14:13
got to rush your head, he says this. He said, we talked
14:15
about it a little bit. He said, hey, blessed are you guys,
14:18
because you saw this stuff. But I'm telling you double blessed are those
14:20
who believe and have not seen. So the man went, He went to
14:28
the pool of Silom. He did what Jesus said, and he washed his
14:31
eyes, and suddenly he could see. And where did he go? He
14:33
went home. He went home, and his neighbors and those who knew all
14:37
about this guy's neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging, asks,
14:39
Wait a minute, isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg
14:43
in the same place every single day, every single week, every single year.
14:46
Some claim that he was, but others said, no, that can't
14:50
be him. He just looks like that guy. But he himself insisted,
14:54
no, it's me. I'm the guy that used to sit there begging all
14:56
that time. And I know I look a little bit different because now I
15:00
can see, and I'm walking differently, and my stick's gone, and my
15:01
friends are gone. And of course they asked the question anybody would ask.
15:05
How how were your eyes open? They asked, and he replied, here's
15:11
what happened. The man they called Jesus. The man they called Jesus,
15:15
we've heard of this man. We've heard rumors. Some of you said,
15:18
you've seen him. The man they called Jesus made some mud and put it
15:22
on my eyes. I guess he didn't know how he made the mud.
15:24
Maybe it's better not to know. He made some mud and put it on
15:28
my eyes. And he told me to go to Salom and wash, and
15:31
I did what he asked me to do, even though it made absolutely no
15:35
sense. There it is again, I did we asked me to do,
15:41
and I washed, and then I could see. And of course they're curious.
15:43
And where is this man? They asked him, And he said,
15:48
I don't know. I didn't see which way he went. Sherlock, right,
15:56
I shouldn't put words in the mouth of some one that Jesus healed.
16:00
So this is what he actually said. He said, I don't know.
16:04
So they did what they were supposed to do based on the Old Covenant or
16:07
the relationship between God and the nation of Israel. When someone was miraculously healed,
16:11
or it seemed like somebody was going to be able to come back into
16:15
society after being healed of a disease, you were to take them to the
16:18
religious leaders. They were to present themselves to the religious leaders, so they
16:21
take him to the Pharisees. So they brought him to the Pharisees, the
16:23
man who had been blind, and then the music to soundtrack changes. Now
16:27
the day he's done it again. Now, the day on which Jesus made
16:32
the mud and opened the man's eyes was the Sabbath. When will he learn
16:37
According to the tradition of the elders, according to the oral not the written
16:41
Torah, you weren't allowed to do certain things on the Sabbath, obviously,
16:45
and one of the things you couldn't do was mix. You couldn't need knead.
16:48
And because he took spit and mud and he mixed and needed, he
16:52
broke the Sabbath. And you weren't supposed to heal or do medicine on the
16:55
Sabbath either, unless it was to save a life. So he's in big
16:57
trouble. Therefore, the Pharisees and they found out what happened. They asked
17:00
him how he had received a sight, and he said, well, he
17:03
put mud on my eyes. And the man replied, the man replied,
17:06
and I washed. And now he's probably violated the Sabbath as well. And
17:10
now I see and some of the Pharisees said, this man talking about Jesus
17:15
is not from God. Okay, how do you know that? Well,
17:18
it's obvious, for he does not keep the Sabbath. Well, technically he
17:23
didn't keep their version of the Sabbath. Technically he didn't really break any of
17:29
God's written law. But what happened was, and let's not be too judgmental,
17:33
Jesus didn't fit in their God box. And whether you recognize it or
17:40
not, most of us, maybe all of us, maybe they even those
17:44
of you who don't even believe in God. We have a God box,
17:48
and Jesus is operating outside the boundaries of the God box. Therefore he cannot
17:52
possibly be from God. But others ask a very important question. Wait a
17:59
minute, Wait a minute. Others asked, how can a sinner if he's
18:02
not from God, then he's like one of us and the rest of us
18:03
are sinners. And how can a sinner perform such a sign, not a
18:07
miracle, a sign? John says, these are all pointing to the identity
18:11
of Jesus. How can a sinner perform such signs? So they were divided.
18:17
Then they turned again to the man who's standing there, and to the
18:19
blind man, They say, what do you have to say about him?
18:22
Is he a sinner? Or is it he a sinner? He's the one
18:25
who opened your eyes. And the man replied, I don't know. He's
18:30
a prophet. Now, some of the pharisees still did not even believe that
18:34
he had been blind and that he'd received his side. They think he's making
18:37
this whole thing up. Until they sent for the man's parents, and so
18:41
they bring in the man's parents. And the man's parents are afraid, because
18:45
when you get called in by the pharisees on the Sabbath, you've probably done
18:48
something wrong. Is this your son, they ask his parents. Is this
18:52
the one you say was born blind? How is it that he can now
18:56
see? And they said, well, we know this, we know he's
19:00
our son. The parents answered, and we know he was born blind,
19:04
but how he can now see, and who opened his eyes we don't know.
19:08
Ask him. He's old enough to tell you himself. He's old enough
19:12
to stand in court. He's old enough to testify for himself. His parents
19:17
said this, Check this out. His parents said this because they were afraid
19:21
of the Jewish leaders who had and here's where some of us are who had
19:26
already decided, who had already made up their minds. There was not room
19:32
in their theology, There was not room in their worldview for what they were
19:36
seeing, for what they were experiencing, for what was happening right before their
19:42
very eyes. They had already decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the
19:51
Messiah would be put out of the synagogue, ostracized from the community. The
19:56
word we might use is ex communicated from Judea's from first century Judaism, Temple
20:03
Judaism. The religious leaders, like some of us, Let's be honest,
20:07
the religious leaders were the ones who were blind. They were actually blinded by
20:11
their presuppositions. They were blinded by their assumptions. Francis Collins, as we
20:17
heard a few weeks ago, referred to this as willful blindness. When there's
20:22
something to see, but you won't look, When there's something to discover and
20:26
you won't take the time to discover it. When the cognitive bias that just
20:30
allows you to only take in the information that affirms and confirms confirmation bias where
20:37
you only take an information that confirms what you already believe, and you refuse
20:41
to acknowledge anything that might pull you out of your context, that might cause
20:45
you to think beyond your if you're a Christian, or even a non Christian,
20:48
outside your God box. So there's still not done with this guy.
20:55
So a second time. A second time, they summoned the man, come
20:57
back over here, give glory to God by telling the truth. They said,
21:00
we know this man is a sinner. Okay, so you were blind.
21:03
We've gotten that far. We've asked your parents. So something has happened,
21:07
but clearly this Jesus man had nothing to do with it. So give
21:11
glory to God because this man is a sinner, and sinners could not perform
21:15
such a sign. He replies, whether he Jesus is a sinner or not,
21:19
I don't know. And again here we are whether he's a siner or
21:25
not. In other words, he would say, look, I don't know
21:26
everything. I don't understand everything. But here's the thing. I don't have
21:33
to understand everything to believe something. I don't have to be able to explain
21:38
everything to believe what's right before my very eyes. I don't have to be
21:44
able to explain how everything worked out and why it worked out. To know
21:47
that something has happened, I don't have to understand everything to believe something.
21:53
And here's the good news. Neither do you. And maybe this is where
22:00
you've been hung up. And I understand this. You want to understand everything
22:06
before you believe anything. I get this. I am so wired this way.
22:11
But here's the thing that you and I have in common. Okay.
22:15
Isn't it true that you and I don't hold to this standard in other areas
22:21
of life? Right? I mean? Do you believe in love? Can
22:27
you explain it? Do you believe in energy? I know you can't explain
22:33
that. Do you believe in consciousness? We can't explain that either. Here's
22:38
a big one. Do you believe in information? Yeah? I believe in
22:42
information. Do you use information? Yet? Can you explain it? Not?
22:45
Really? Same with energy, same with consciousness, same with love.
22:51
Here's some great news because I know some of you would love to come back
22:55
into faith, but your brain won't let you. Your mind won't let you
22:57
some of you. I know this fact. Some of you missed the songs,
23:02
some of you missed the energy, some of you missed the community.
23:06
But something happened and you got bumped out and you stand on the outside looking
23:08
in, and you think Okay, I miss some of that, but I've
23:14
got to understand everything before I believe anything, and you don't hold yourself to
23:21
that standard in any other arena of your life. And your heavenly father,
23:25
who's way bigger than your Godbox says, let's just take a baby step and
23:30
believe something, and perhaps along the way you'll understand more. Story continues this
23:38
young man, he's getting bold now. He's kind of fed up with this
23:41
whole thing. He replied. Whether he is a sinner or not, I
23:45
don't know, but there is one thing I do know, and I love
23:49
this next line. This may be my favorite line in the whole Bible that
23:52
wasn't uttered by a prophet or othered uttered by Jesus. He says, here's
23:56
the one thing I know. Okay, let's just start with what I do
23:59
now. I can't answer all your questions. I don't know if he's a
24:00
sinner. Don't ask many theological questions. Here's what I know. I was
24:04
blind, but now I see. Let me go over that again for you
24:08
guys, I was blind, but now I see. And here's the incredible
24:14
thing. For many of you. You know this. This is the story
24:15
of millions and millions of Christians. This I bet for many of you,
24:19
this is your story, right. I can't explain it all. I don't
24:23
understand it all. All I know is this, there was a season in
24:26
my life when I was at the end of myself. There was a season
24:30
in my life when I had hit a wall. There was a season in
24:32
my life when I was controlled by an addiction. There was a season in
24:34
my life that I was so lonely I was suicidal. There was a season
24:38
of my life where I had come to the end and I had no place
24:41
else to go, and I cried out to God, or I asked God,
24:45
or I got on my knees, and don't. I can't explain it.
24:48
I can't show you any verses to substantiate this. All I can tell
24:52
you is this, something happened, and for some of you, it happened
24:56
instantly, and for some of you it happened. But something happened, and
25:03
you were blind, and now you can see you've never been the same,
25:12
And when people hear your story, you acknowledge there are some gaps. And
25:17
yeah, I'm not sure how this lines up with that. I'm just telling
25:19
you I would not go back to where I was for anything, and only
25:23
by the grace of a living personal God who has invited me to call him
25:29
Father. Am I where I am today? All I know is this I
25:36
was blind, Now I can see. Then they ask him. They're still
25:40
not done. Then they ask him, okay, so what did he do
25:44
to you? How did he open your eyes? They want more reasons not
25:48
to believe. And now this guy is done. He answered, I have
25:52
told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear
25:57
it again? And then he gets in their face? Do you want to
26:02
become his disciples? Too? He's done. They hurled insults at him and
26:11
said, you are this fellow's disciple. We are disciples of Moses. We
26:15
know for certain that God spoke to Moses. But as for this fellow,
26:18
we don't even know where he comes from. And now this guy, he's
26:23
just all up in their face. The man answered, now that is truly
26:27
remarkable. I mean, me being healed today, that's remarkable. But here's
26:30
something more remarkable than that. You don't know where he comes from. Yet
26:34
he opened my eyes. Isn't it obvious where he comes from? Isn't it
26:38
right before your eyes? How much more evidence? Do you need to know
26:42
that he came from God? Somebody who's not from God couldnot open the eyes
26:45
of a man born blind. He continues, if this man were not from
26:49
God, he could do nothing like this, to which they replied, because
26:55
they're not used to this. You were steeped in sin at birth. In
27:02
other words, you deserve to be born blind. Your parents deserve to raise
27:08
you and spend all that extra time and all their extra resources raising you,
27:12
and then being embarrassed by you because you became a beggar. You deserve exactly
27:18
what you got. You were steeped, You were conceived in sin. How
27:23
dare you lecture us? And they threw him out Willful blindness, willful blindness
27:37
refusing to look, refusing to see what can be seen, refusing to discover
27:47
what can be discovered, being too afraid to turn around and peer beyond what
27:52
we already know into the unknown. Let's just be honest for all of us.
27:57
That's not flattering to anyone, that doesn't look good on anyone. And
28:03
Christians we are certainly not immune. I mean, come on. Historically,
28:08
our resistance to science, our resistance to people who aren't like us, our
28:15
resistance to people who don't fit in the box of what we have always been
28:19
taught is acceptable to God. Doesn't our unwillingness to look beyond our God box
28:25
make us look a little bit like the religious leaders in the story. And
28:32
what happens on the other side of that journey for many of us is instead
28:36
of expressing compassion, we have expressed disdain. That for different generations, there
28:41
have been different groups of people that have met this when they came to the
28:45
church where we sing about God's mercy and grace, because we couldn't figure out
28:52
how they fit in the God box we grew up with. If you've limited
29:00
God to the God of the box, if you've limited God to the God
29:06
of the box, you have run the risk of leaving outside the context of
29:11
your spirituality many many, many people that God loves, and not only this,
29:15
here's the worst thing. I'm convinced of. This you will ultimately miss
29:22
God. We should be the most curious, the most accommodating, the most
29:29
accepting, the most loving, the most compassionate, the most open minded people
29:33
in any room we enter. We should not be afraid to gaze past the
29:38
frontiers of our knowledge, pass the frontiers into our ignorance. We should be
29:44
the most excited about science, and we should be the most excited about creating
29:49
context for people who are far from God to move toward God. And any
29:52
step anyone takes towards God, whether it fits in our little box or not,
29:56
should excite us to no end, even if they don't get the words
30:02
right, even if they don't get the theology right, even if they don't
30:07
pray right. And if we don't move beyond the God in the box like
30:12
the men in the story, here's the again, the great tragedy. We
30:17
run the risk of missing God. Now, if you're not a Christian or
30:22
you used to be, or somebody's making you watch this. They're gonna feed
30:26
you dessert, or they're gonna take you to lunch. I don't know how
30:27
they got you to watch this, or you're accidentally watching it. I don't
30:30
know. Here's the thing for you. Have you have you looked? Are
30:38
you afraid to look? Are you curious? Have you looked lately? Have
30:45
you closed the door on all religion? Have you closed the door on the
30:49
concept of God? Have you closed the door on the fact that Jesus might
30:52
in fact be who Jesus claimed to be. Have you closed the door on
30:55
the concept of a physical, literal resurrection two thousand years ago? And here's
30:59
the question, is is that really wise? And is it possible? Just
31:06
saying is it possible? You have a God box as well, and anything
31:12
that doesn't immediately fit you immediately discount. And perhaps that's why you walked away
31:19
from faith long ago or maybe even recently. In fact, it's even stranger
31:25
than that. Maybe maybe the God you quit believing in is the same God
31:32
that some of us Christians try to keep in a box. And you had
31:36
the courage to look beyond the box and lost faith. And many Christians are
31:40
afraid to look beyond the box because they're afraid they'll lose faith. And the
31:42
truth is God is a whole lot bigger than our little, any bitty box.
31:48
In fact, perhaps perhaps perhaps God is bigger than you thought he was.
31:53
And perhaps this is the kicker, Perhaps God is bigger than you were
31:57
taught he was. Because I think we would agree with this. It's okay
32:06
to be wrong. It's okay to be wrong about something. We're all wrong
32:10
about a lot of things. I mean, every ten years you look back
32:13
and go ooh, that's embarrassing, right, I mean, you look at
32:15
what you were and you look at what you thought, and both of them
32:17
are embarrassing. Fortunately, there are no pictures of our misconceptions about things right
32:23
twenty years ago, Oh my goodness, I can't believe I thought that and
32:25
believe that right. One hundred years from now, we're all going to be
32:29
proven wrong about most things. Right, you think about the things your parents
32:32
taught you, or believe it's like my parents. Hey, one day,
32:35
I mean, it just goes on. I mean, it's okay, it's
32:37
okay to be wrong, and it's okay not to know because we're all learning
32:42
and we're all curious, we're all figuring things out. But could we all
32:46
agree on this. It is not okay not to look if there is something
32:53
to be seen. And John's and higher message throughout his gospel is simply this,
33:02
there is something you should see. If you had seen what I saw,
33:10
if you had seen what we saw, I'm convinced, he would say,
33:16
we're convinced that you too would believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that
33:23
Jesus is the Son of God, and that by believing you would have life
33:28
in his name. Here's what I think he would say. He would say,
33:30
Look, I'm a simple man. I was a fisherman. I was
33:35
minding my own business when he came along. I was just a bystander who
33:42
had the privilege to live in the days when the light of the world touched
33:47
down in the world, and it was so unbelievably bright, and it was
33:53
so much better. And he was so much bigger than any of us thought.
34:00
He was the biggest discovery of all. I think he would tell us
34:07
is this. He so loved the world that he gave himself so that no
34:15
one would ever be lost to God. And that took us all by surprise.
34:22
And when he died, we assumed we had been fooled, we had
34:28
been tricked, and it was over. But then he rose from the dead
34:32
and we realized he's exactly who he claimed to be in Oh my goodness,
34:37
this whole thing was so much bigger than we thought it was. The good
34:43
news is this, You do not have to understand everything to believe something.
34:50
So would you consider the invitation of John and just look and perhaps one day
34:57
believe, or for many of you leave again